10DYC: three movies

This was quite possibly the easiest one to do, just for the fact that I have three favorite movies, and I just can not chose a favorite of the three.  My reasons behind why I love them so much, well, they're a bit difficult to explain.

1. The Great Debaters

Besides the fact that I love debate, I love this movie because of the historical references that they included.  The acting is just fantastic and I can simply watch this movie over and over again. Plus, it's a Harpo film, if that counts for anything.  Another one of my favorite quotes comes from this movie, and it's also currently at the top of this blog.

"We do what we have to do,

so we can do what we want to do."

2. Soul Surfer

I first saw this movie with my youth leader and one of my friends from church when it first came out in theatres.  I didn't really know what to expect going into the movie, but I had an open mind about it.  I remember at one point, crying during the movie and I still do at the same part.  I love this movie because I feel a connection to the story line, it has also explained things to me that no one has been able to do.

Sidenote: we're actually doing a bible study group over this movie in our church youth group.

The outline for the group is supposed to last until the end of December if I remember correctly.

Once we finish the study over this movie, I'll write a full review over it and explain exactly 

what I thought about it.

2. The Ultimate Gift

I can't even begin to explain this one.  I can say that I cry, without doubt, every single time I watch it.  I also have a form of a connection to this story line as well, though in a slightly different sense.  I seriously can't even explain my reasons why I love this movie because they're so complex that my brain hasn't even completely comprehended them.

Today is awesome because tomorrow is Friday!

days until ACT: 29
days until the fall musical: 53
days until I become an adult: 107
days until graduation: 238

BEDA 30: debate

The other day I kind of mentioned something about making a decision of sorts, and I basically just left it at that, a cryptic and sort of worthless statement that explained nothing.  It has to do with debate, and it was actually a really big decision I made, and I couldn't have done it without the strong support of my mom.

I dropped debate.

In other words, I'm saying I quit debate.  Saying I "dropped" it (referring mainly to dropping the class) is the cowardly way of admitting that I did in fact quit debate.

WHY YOU QUIT?!

Gah, so many people have asked that. I genuinely love debate, but this season is/was different.  I think the largest part of it is that it is senior year and I have a lot of things riding on these two semesters, I can't afford to muck up.  And considering when I finally made the decision during the summer that I wasn't going to debate at a collegiate level, things went bad.

It wasn't that I wasn't applying myself and not working hard, because I was doing both.  Between things already getting in the way with school and the fact that my partner wasn't in the debate class with me, it made working, or attempting to work on case extremely difficult.  I was stressing out way too much.  There was three days last week when I came home crying because of the situation.

Up until today, I haven't said much about dropping debate.  I switched from debate to music history eighth hour on Friday, and no one really noticed until today.  Sure the other advanced debaters are slightly upset that they lost someone from the team, but I know that at least one person for sure doesn't blame me considering the amount of extra hard work I have to do this fall during the show to work on that theatre activity scholarship.

So there you have it. You know about my decision now, and to be truthfully honest, since Friday I've been so much happier. I've started throwing about debate papers I sure as hell don't need, and deleting stuff off my laptop.  In general, I'm a lot happier.

days until the fall musical: 47
days until I become an adult: 129
days until graduation: 263
steps taken today: 1,998+ I really didn't do much walking today. WEIRD.

BEDA 6: weird day

Today was such a weird day.  I got up at 4:30 so I could head to the lake with my dad and go fishing while it was still some what cool, only to get woken up to lightening and my joints hurting which obviously meant it was raining.  Though I guess, since I hadn't even bother to look outside, it was actually pouring.  Which don't get me wrong, as badly as I wanted to go fishing I could deal with a nice torrential down pour considering how dry our spring and summer has been. We needed it.  Mom was still nice enough to make us cinnamon rolls, so once dad got here we chowed down like we were getting ready to head out for a long day of fishing.  Two hours later I went back to bed and slept for what seemed like forever.

My mom woke me up once again about one in the afternoon and asked me if I wanted to go with my dad to Wichita to Gander Mountain.  I didn't know why we were going to Gander in the first place but I agreed since I hadn't been in this summer I wanted to see what new stocks they had and to see if I could find that turkey shot gun I had found a couple of years ago, though I'm positive I may never find it again...I eventually got up and showered and went to pick my dad up at four.

The trip to Wichita was tense but uneventful, unless you count too much road construction.  Wichita has always had major construction somewhere in the city and we always end up getting stuck in it wherever we go.  In at Gander, I didn't really find anything that caught my eye except for a man that looked strangely similar to my brother, except he was extremely rude, and a nice chair that I would have sat in for the rest of my life if my dad hadn't ushered me back to the hunting section of the store.

The thing about Gander is I usually find all this stuff that I really like but it's so freaking expensive. I've gotten to the point where I don't even bother asking for anything from Gander because I know the answer will be no and that I don't have enough money to purchase it from my own bank account.  The price of ammunition has sky rocketed even over the last few months, I know it was expensive before but now it's just outrageous.  A box of ammo for my .22 that I was looking at was $54.00, I nearly had a heart attack on the spot. Needless to say we usually only go to Gander to drool every once in a while and left empty handed. Side note, I wore one of my Bass Pro Shops shirt into Gander, I felt like a beast.


And then, of course, I got a random text message from Jake, someone on the debate team, telling me a bunch of the team was getting together to work on debate stuff and just hang out as a team.  So after I got home and then went back out to do a couple errands for my mom I went to Jake's.  Ended up, since I arrived a bit later than everyone else, that we were just watching Star Wars and talking about random things, some of it pertained to debate but most of it didn't.  It was fun, I love being around my debate team, it's always a good time.

Came home early per request of my mom, which I was okay with because my joints were starting to hurt again.  I really hope it starts to rain again, so I can sleep peacefully tonight, but I want it to stop in time for dad and I to go fishing tomorrow.

And I just now realized, that after writing all this I haven't explained why I thought to day was so weird.  I just felt like I did a bunch of random things that was productive but yet I slept nearly all day...

BEDA 1: august already?

It's nearing 11 in the evening as I'm writing this, and if it hadn't been for the thought of checking my YouTube subscriptions to see what was new since I was out all evening, I wouldn't have seen a VEDA video which in turn wouldn't have reminded me that it is in fact the first of August which means it's BEDA time.

Honestly, I'm still trying to grasp that fact that it's already AUGUST. It seems like it should be the start of June, not August.  I mean, I go to enroll for senior year of high school on Thursday and I start school in like two weeks.  It's completely nuts for me to understand right now though I don't understand why.

I'm actually really really REALLY looking forward to school this year.  Partially because it's senior year and I'm ready for the next steps in my life, even if it means that I'm officially becoming an adult and having to make big important decisions on my own, I'm ready for it; and I'm ready for school in general.  I actually really enjoy going to school, I love to learn new things, I think that's why I do so well in school (if only I did my homework more often) because I enjoy learning and I don't try to fight the process like other kids might.

Out of all the things this next school year offer, I'm especially excited about the upcoming debate season.  Mainly because in debate I'm always learning something new whether it's from a new evidence card that I find, or if it's from hearing other people's arguments, I seem to also be absorbing things; though unfortunately sometimes I don't remember half the things because there's so much to it.  Debate holds a really special place in my heart, and it's not just because I get to argue without getting in trouble, it's because with debate you really have to work at it.  It's not something that comes naturally to everyone when they first try it.  There's a lot of things that make up debate that you've got to understand before you can even debate, and you usually don't understand any of it until you're stuck in the middle of a debate round and you've got to use it.  Then it all makes sense and it all clicks.  Debate really makes your brain work, and I really think it teaches you a lot of skills that you have to teach yourself.

Anyway, after all that talk about me not understanding how it's August already, talk about school and of debate, I just want to give you a small run down about BEDA. If you don't know what BEDA is it stands for Blog Every Day August (or April, but in this case it's August).  Basically, it's exactly what it sounds like, you blog every day of the month.  I'm not going to try and be one of those people who plans out their blog posts for BEDA because I KNOW without a doubt that once school starts I won't stick to it.  So you're probably going to end up reading a lot of random things throughout this month, and I hope you stick along for the ride.